Investigate Cable-car Tragedy Thoroughly To Protect Civilians

February 6, 1998

The immediate assignment for the Pentagon is to determine how and why a Marine jet fighter on a supposedly routine training exercise Tuesday severed a cable-car line in the Italian Alps, sending 20 people plunging to their deaths.

The next task for the Pentagon is to take steps to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.

Initial reports indicate the EA-6B Prowler piloted by an unidentified Marine captain was flying six miles off course and hundreds of feet below the minimum prescribed altitude of 1,000 feet when its tail fin sliced through a cable carrying a car filled with vacationers near the small ski resort of Cavalese.

Apparently unaware of the carnage they had caused, the pilot and his three crew members returned to the U.S. air base at Aviano, about 90 miles to the east. The Marine aviators are participating in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, where the EA-6B is used to identify the location and type of enemy surface-to-air missile radars and either jam their signals or attack them with missiles. This sometimes requires flying as low as 100 feet off the ground to evade enemy radar.

Villagers said they have complained for years about the noise and danger inherent in the low-level training missions by both American and Italian pilots, but their protests went unheeded. Local officials also maintain that military jets often try to fly beneath the ski-lift cable-car lines on their return to Aviano.

Italian Premier Romano Prodi publicly accused the pilot of ``tragic recklessness'' in the Cavalese disaster, an indictment that was not disputed by a Pentagon spokesman.

The Pentagon should conduct a thorough investigation and cooperate fully with Italian authorities to establish training procedures that will adequately prepare pilots for combat without subjecting civilians to such unacceptable risks.